Eternity's Mark Page 14

  “Not that way, Hannah.” Taggart took her arm and steered her toward the tunnel to the left. “If ye wish to see the nursery, we need to follow this one.”

  Hannah tensed. “Could you light some more torches? I just felt something rather damp slither beside my foot and I’m really hoping it was just a clump of seaweed.” She hadn’t felt any vibes from whatever it was on the ground so she hoped it wasn’t any type of creature.

  The walls sweated, radiating the steady cool of the moist earth, but the farther they traveled down the torch-lit tunnel, the warmer the air grew. Taggart brought the torches lining the passage to life. Hannah’s feet sank into the soft, white sand sparkling in the light of the flickering flames. The farther they walked, the finer the grain became and her feet sank deeper into the path.

  “What is that sound?” Hannah stopped. She cocked her head, straining to listen to the music floating down the passage. “Is that Mozart I hear playing in the distance?”

  Taggart closed his eyes, turned his face in the direction of the nursery, then smiled and shook his head. “No. Vivaldi. Ye missed it because the song neared the end and they have it programmed to fade out when it’s time for the next selection.”

  “Classical music for the nursery?” Hannah turned to Taggart as another aria began.

  With a shrug and a knowing smile, Taggart nodded toward the door up ahead. “It seems to lessen the frequency of frenetic lightning activity in the eggs. When there is less lightning activity in the eggs, there is less distress among the hatchlings.”

  “I see.” Hannah nodded. She really didn’t see at all, but she didn’t want Taggart to think her an idiot. Maybe once inside this wondrous nursery, she’d figure out what Taggart meant. She’d read studies about classical music played for human babies in the womb. Why not baby Draecna?

  At the end of the passage, a metallic arched door blackened with centuries of age awaited them. Taggart waved his hand over the archaic script and whorls carved on the disk in the center of the door and waited. In a few moments, the elaborate metalwork responded to his movement; the whorls burnished to a rich golden glow and then spun in a counter-clockwise circle. Shouldering it open, he stood aside and waited for Hannah to step inside.

  The first thing Hannah noticed was the familiar aroma wafting through the cavern. The breeze of it brushed across her face as soon as she walked through the archway. The stale, dank air of the caves disappeared. This same scent lingered on the pillows and sheets in her room. It greeted her every morning when she opened her eyes and every evening when she retired. Lifting her chin, she sniffed the air to seek out the source of the fragrance. “What is that smell?”

  “Dahliacieos.” At her answering stupefied stare, Taggart pointed to several niches carved out in the walls where clumps of deep purple orchid-type flowers tumbled from moss-covered clumps of earth stuffed into wired baskets.

  Edging her way around the narrow stone walkway surrounding the room, Hannah stood on tiptoe and studied the strange-looking flowers. “How do they grow down here without any type of light? I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

  “They are the moon orchid. They abhor any form of sunlight at all,” Taggart explained. “They come from Erastaed.”

  A gentle thump drew her attention to the center of the room. There were twenty-one indentations smoothed into a raised stone pedestal approximately twenty feet in diameter. Each indentation was padded, velvet-lined, and twenty of them held softly glowing Draecna eggs, the size of large melons.

  “One is missing.” Hannah pointed to an empty spot adjacent to a freshly cemented-off tunnel on the other side of the room.

  Taggart’s face hardened into a stony mask as he nodded toward the tunnel with a thunderous glare. “Sloan,” he hissed. He spit his brother’s name as though it poisoned his mouth. “The bastard stole the egg. He is as greedy as our father. He seeks the power of the Draecna race.”

  Hannah circled the room, mesmerized by the blush-colored eggs and the kinetic flashes of light erupting from within their thick, stony shells. Dancing, flashing to twenty frantic heartbeats, the air around her swirled with intensity of the energy from the little beasts. Moving closer, she covered her ears with her hands. Her mind hummed with tiny voices. How could she hear them? She thought she couldn’t connect her mind to Draecna after the failed attempt with Gearlach. Yet dozens of whispers floated together into a muddled chaos. A cacophony of singsongs chattered like magpies inside her head. “Stop! Not all at once. You’ve got to take turns so I can understand you.”

  “Ecnelis!” Taggart clapped his hands together. The lightning activity of the eggs slowed to just one or two. He turned to Hannah. “Any better?”

  Biting her lip, Hannah eased open her eyes and tried to relax. Mercy, all their tiny voices had been like a stereo blasting too loud. She cringed at what she feared she might hear as she opened her mind again. Much better. Two very delicate voices nudged the back of her mind. Her eyes widened. What they whispered didn’t sound very good. With a glance at Taggart, she fixed him with a confused frown. “We need to get the other egg back before it hatches. They said their hatching moon isn’t very far away. What are they talking about?”

  Taggart turned from the eggs with a heavy sigh as he walked around the upraised platform. “Dinna worry. Sloan’s hatchling is as good as dead. His egg will never hatch.”

  “What?” Her heart wrenched at the thought of an innocent creature abandoned and left for dead. Hannah swiped the back of her hand across her forehead. The warmth of the nursery had the sweat trickling down into her eyes. “Why would you say that? Do you think he damaged it when he stole it from the nursery?”

  Holding out his hand, Taggart beckoned for Hannah to follow him around the pedestal to yet another tunnel leading out of the secluded room. “Sloan is missing one very important element when it comes to bringing a young Draecna into the world.”

  “What?” Hannah took one look back at the sparkling eggs as she followed Taggart out into the tunnel.

  Pulling her close as he reached around her to bolt the door, Taggart fixed her with a meaningful wink. “He doesn’t have you.”

  The lights flashed with less erratic frenzy as long as he played the music. The little beast responded best to the sweetness of the violins; the string music floating through the air seemed to lessen the creature’s building hysteria.

  Sloan leaned forward, resting his fingertips on the warm, pebbled surface of the egg and wished for the hundredth time that he’d been born with the powers of a guardian. Untold power and access to endless riches coiled right beneath his fingertips, and yet he couldn’t obtain it. Blast the rules of Draecna magic and their ridiculous, tenuous existence. Sloan ground his teeth as the hatchling shifted positions within the egg and slithered against the shell. “If ye weren’t so damned particular, I could call ye forth rather than wait for some weak human from the other side.”

  A shuffling grunt at the doorway interrupted his brooding conversation with the egg and resulted in an immediate flash of fury pumping through his veins. Who dared interrupt him in his private chambers? Mia wasn’t due back from Taroc Na Mor, and all the other servants knew better than to bother him unless he summoned them.

  “This better be good!” Sloan sneered at the polished slate door as it shushed its way open across the thick plush of the carpeted floor. Curling his hands on either side of the egg, he scowled at the doorway, waiting to see who was stupid enough to put their own neck in a noose.

  As the figure hitched its way out of the shadows of the hallway, Sloan relaxed back into the depths of his wingback chair. “Ah, it is you, my friend. I hadna expected to see you this evening. I thought ye had returned to the caverns.” Sloan drummed his nails on the desk. In fact, Sloan hadn’t expected to see the dark one unless he summoned him for another delicate assignment.

  The lone soul remained silent, pointed at the egg resting in the center of Sloan’s oval desk, then pointed back at Sloan.

 
“Yes, I appreciate your getting me the egg and I paid ye for your troubles, remember?” Pushing back from the desk, Sloan tensed his satin-clad legs against the front of his chair and tapped his fingers in time with his words. He studied his guest and controlled his voice. By the infernal fires, he wasn’t in the mood to be patient this evening.

  His visitor reached over, tapped once on the egg, then raised his head and looked up at Sloan with an expectant frown.

  Rubbing the back of his fingers against the silver stubble gathering beneath his chin, Sloan’s irritation flared. His well-paid thief had served his purpose. It was time for him to disappear into the mountains of Erastaed until summoned again. If not for the fact he might need him in the future, Sloan would have disposed of him in a more permanent manner. He was a secret weapon that could still prove useful especially the way things were going on the other side. Lowering his hands to the wide arms of his chair, Sloan dug his nails deep into the sumptuous leather as he attempted to reign in his ire. “The egg willna hatch without the touch of the guardian. Our little Mia is in the process of extending our invitation to the guardian now. Then our little hatchling can be born and a new dawn of the Draecna race can begin. Ye must be patient, my friend.”

  A growling laugh rumbled up from the belly of the guest and echoed off the mirrored walls until the crystals in the chandelier tinkled overhead. Then he turned around, shuffled out of the room, and closed the door behind him.

  “That one’s more insane than I am,” Sloan muttered to the egg.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Ye had her that close and ye didna do anything about it? I am so disappointed in ye. Ye were my hero. Now who in the world am I going to look up to when it comes to beddin’ the lasses?” Gearlach moaned into his tankard and shook his head as his voice echoed off the blackened beams of the high-ceilinged kitchen.

  Septamus reached over, picked up the keg, and slid it down the table out of Gearlach’s reach. “No more for you. Five hundred years old and ye weep in your cups after only six kegs of ale. What the hell is wrong wi’ ye? Ye shame us, Gearlach. A Draecna who canna hold his grog before the sun rises above the horizon! Ye’re a disgrace to the entire race.”

  Taggart slumped at the wide table with his chin propped in one hand and his tankard clenched in the other. They were right. He’d had her so close. And then he’d gone and gotten gallant and obviously very stupid. And now here he sat in a steamy kitchen with two half-sotted Draecna and his cock throbbing between his legs. “I had to show her the truth. I couldna take her before she knew me for what I truly was.” He drained his tankard and threw it across the table. God’s beard, he tired of dousing himself in the depths of the frigid sea. He might as well be cursed to be one of the selkies, he spent so much time swimming the waters of the loch.

  Septamus nodded as he drummed his claws in time with his words. “Aye, that’s true. There would’ve been hell to pay if ye had taken the lass and then shown her what ye were. But tell me something... .” His eye slits flexed in the gas light of the lamps as he frowned at Taggart over the top of his cup. “Once she didna run screamin’ from your form, why the hell did ye not take her after ye got to the caves?”

  A tortured moan escaped from his chest, as Taggart buried his face in his arms. “The moment had passed. She asked me so many blasted questions about how I came to be. The magic of the kiss had left us.” He’d always had such lousy timing with women. They were such complicated creatures. Draecna had it easy. A Draecna mate never became an issue. Since they were genetically matched at the time of birth, nothing was ever left to chance unless they were unwise enough to wander from tradition as Taggart’s mother had.

  “This is so verra sad,” Gearlach blubbered as he plopped his snout to the edge of the table.

  With a jerk of his head in Gearlach’s direction, Septamus rolled his eyes. “Did ye have to lift his silencing spell?”

  “I couldn’t verra well leave him silent forever,” Taggart mumbled from the depths of his arms as he gave a defeated shrug. He might as well let Gearlach speak. Lord knows Hannah was probably finished talking to him.

  “I don’t know why not,” Septamus muttered as he nudged the snoring Gearlach with his tail.

  “Well, ye better sober up because she’s on her way down here from her rooms and she wants to see you, Taggart.” Thaetus smacked his hand on a copper pot hanging on the wall as he bounded into the room.

  “Down here?” Taggart jumped up from the table. Sheer panic exploded through the numbing effect of the grog. What in holy hell could she be coming down here for? Why did she want to see him?

  “Gearlach! Dammit, wake up ye drunken oaf!” Septamus whacked the snoring Draecna with his tail and sent him sprawling on the floor. Pottery rattled in the cupboards as Gearlach crashed to the marbled tiles.

  “All of ye, out. Out of here, now!” Taggart pounded on the table and pointed toward the rear kitchen door leading to the outer pantries.

  “We’re trying, dammit! He’s drunk on his arse. He’ll no’ wake up until late tomorrow afternoon.” With a jerk of his head, Septamus hooked a claw around one of Gearlach’s horns and started dragging him toward the door. “Grab the bastard’s tail, Thaetus. Ye may be scrawny but ye can help me wedge his wide, scaly arse through the door.”

  “Here, move out of the way, Thaetus. Ye’ll throw your back out again.” Edging past Thaetus as the man turned a strained shade of purple, Taggart grabbed Gearlach’s meaty hind legs at the bend of his leathery knees. Gads, the beast weighed a bloody ton. Gearlach must’ve already packed on his weight in preparation for winter. “Now, Septamus, lift him now. Thaetus, get the damn door.”

  Thaetus scurried around the table in front of Septamus and swung the door wide while they shoved the snoring Draecna across the kitchen. Shoving the inert mass of Gearlach across the threshold, Taggart slammed the door, then smoothed his hair away from his face. As he rubbed the sweat from his face against his shoulder, he cringed and wrinkled his nose. By the fires of hell. He reeked of ale and much worse. God’s beard. He’d repulse the lass before she entered the room.

  In a panic, Taggart glanced around the ancient kitchen. The indoor spa built into the side of the room was his silent salvation. He couldn’t greet her smelling like a Highland sheep. With a clap of his hands, he lit the fires beneath the stone spa entrenched along the wall. He ran to the door, pressed his ear to the wood, and listened for the sound of footsteps echoing down the hallway. Good. Silence greeted his ears. Perhaps he’d finish bathing before she came down from her rooms. Now that the ale had begun to wear off, he couldn’t even stand his own stench.

  He glanced at the door, then turned back toward the waterline as it inched its way up the stone enclosure. He willed the water to flow faster into the tub. He thanked the gods for the ancient spring flowing directly beneath Taroc Na Mor and the spa from one of the earliest guardians. Reportedly, the woman complained of a constant chill even on the balmiest of Highland days. Chiseled stone blocks stood mudded together in the shape of an inviting tub in what she deemed the warmest room in the castle. She had ordered it built in one corner of the overly large kitchen. Fire pits surrounded the perimeter of the tub. The roaring fires kept the magical spring water within the stone tank heated for as long as the fires burned. The complex system of ancient piping no longer functioned, but the original sluicing mechanism had been quite impressive indeed. Stripping off his clothes, Taggart hesitated before stepping into the water. He’d always heard the spring had strange powers, unexplained magics from this side of the portal. It didn’t matter. There wasn’t time; he had to get clean.

  Taking a deep breath, Taggart groaned as he eased into the steaming hot water. He knew he didn’t have to light the fires to keep the water warm. But he had to admit, he liked the flames.

  “Taggart, are you in here?” Hannah shouldered open the door, her dinner tray in her hands.

  Holy blazes, she’d gotten down here quicker than he’d thought. He grabbed the sliver
of soap wedged into the hollowed-out side of the tub, submerged, scrubbed his armpits while he held his breath, then slid back above the surface of the water. “Aye, Hannah. I’m over here in my bath. Would ye mind handing me a fresh cake of soap and a rag?”

  Hannah stared at him, her knuckles whitening on the dinner tray she held in her hands. “There’s a bathtub in the kitchen?”

  As he smoothed his dripping hair back out of his face, he leaned back into the recessed seat of the tub. With a nod, he gave her a teasing wink and propped his feet on the edge of the tub. “It’s a bit of a long story.” The lass had no idea the length of the story and wouldn’t he love to tell her. Taggart scrubbed a bit lower beneath the surface of the water, stretching farther back in the tub.

  “Hmmphf!” Sliding the tray on the marble countertop, Hannah muttered as she searched the shelf above the sink for a bar of soap. “Is there anything about you that isn’t a bit of a long story?” She bent to rummage through the cabinet.

  Taggart took a deep breath as he rubbed his wet hand over his face. Damnation, the woman had a fine, round bottom. His hands itched to cup its firmness. “Hannah.”

  “What?” She came across the room and stood as far away from the tub as possible, holding out the soap and the small towel she’d found.

  “Come closer.” Stretching over the side of the tub, Taggart reached for her, ignoring the bar of soap she offered in her outstretched hand. He wasn’t going to miss his chance this time. The woman wanted him. The burning filled her eyes. Passion danced in the darkness of their depths and he smelled the scent of her need.

  “I ...” Hannah paused, licking her lips as her gaze raked across the delectable expanse of his sculpted, glistening body. “I don’t want to get wet.”

  With a wicked chuckle, Taggart crooked a finger to summon her closer. “I can tell by the look in your eyes, lass, it’s a little too late for that.”